Waves partners with Group-IB to resolve phishing issues

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

There have been a number of cases recently in which WAVES holders have been targeted by a phishing scam on Facebook.

The Waves team has reported receiving many episodes of pages in social media that are claiming to give away WAVES bonuses. Due to this, Waves has taken steps to address this problem, announcing the start of work with cybersecurity firm Group-IB, a global leader in combating high-tech crime and online fraud.

“Decentralising value requires a new paradigm, and it’s important for users to remember that the flipside of being in control of their own funds is that there is no authority to reverse a fraudulent transaction. We would therefore urge our community to be vigilant of such phishing attempts and report and malicious sites and links immediately”, says Alexander Ivanov, CEO of Waves Platform.

Group-IB has long-term experience in protecting banks, financial and insurance organizations from a wide range of threats, including phishing attacks, various types of online fraud, the planting of malicious programs on online banking websites, unauthorized remote connection to a client’s device in order to conduct a transaction on his or her behalf, etc. Group-IB has its official computer emergency response team CERT-GIB (Computer Emergency Response Team — Group-IB) responsible to monitor online activity 24/7 to identify and respond to any incidents or security breaches. CERT-GIB is also authorized by such international communities as FIRST and Trusted Introducer that brings together computer security incident response teams from all over the world.

“For many years we have been studying the constantly evolving information security threats as well as tools, schemes and scenarios used by various hacker groups and scammers, — says Ilya Sachkov, CEO of Group-IB. — They are driven by financial motivation, and, since the inception of the blockchain industry, many of them have shifted their focus to this new market: hackers’ methods of work in relation to fintech projects are similar to those used for attacks on online banking and electronic payments systems. However, unlike the banking segment, fintech is not subject to the regulator’s requirements, the level of information security depends only on each project itself. Does it make sense to wait for the risk to turn into a real problem? WAVES and its community have already answered this question: protection of the business and its assets is a priority for any industry regardless of its age. And we are glad that the companies of the crypto insdustry are gradually coming to this understanding: WAVES and its community serve as an example of this”.

In the meantime, the Waves team told its users to be aware of the problem and to follow a few simple guidelines to prevent the theft of funds: